Polling sites mostly in heavily Democratic areas in swing states shut down on Tuesday after a series of unprecedented and brazen bomb threats were called in that the FBI attributed to Russia.
Many of the threats, the FBI said, came from email accounts with domain names registered to Russia.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the FBI said in a statement.
The threats represent a new front in Election Day interference, allegedly waged in this case by one of the country’s main foreign adversaries. We don’t know the full scope of the threats or their impact; in some states where polling centers had to be evacuated, like Pennsylvania, officials said that they were kept open longer than planned to compensate for the lost time.
The scale of the threats reached across the entire country. Polling sites in Madison, Wisconsin, metro Atlanta, Georgia, and in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all reportedly were hit with anonymous bomb threats.
On the whole, the threats appeared to have targeted Democratic strongholds. Wisconsin’s deep-blue state capitol of Madison was reportedly hit; in Georgia, police said they cleared six polling sites across heavily African American areas of DeKalb County and Fulton County.
“They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election,” Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger (R) said. “If they can get us to fight amongst ourselves, they can count that as a victory. So that tells you a little about the Russians. They’re not our friends.”
It’s an extremely pointed statement from Raffensperger: Only one candidate in the race asked for – and benefitted from – Russian interference. For Trump, that was in the 2016 election.
Trump has reprised that outreach during the 2024 campaign, even as the country faces an even more hostile Russia than it did in 2016 after the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That country’s defense has largely depended on U.S. support; Trump, while reportedly holding secret phone calls with Putin, has promised to end the war in “one day” in part by withholding support to Kyiv.
The threats constitute yet another instance of interference in American elections, largely aimed at tamping down on Democratic votes.
Philadelphia, seen as key to delivering votes for Vice President Kamala Harris, reportedly had nine voting sites receive threats. Additional threats were sent to officials in more Republican-voting areas of the state like Delaware County and West Chester.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said that the state was coordinating with the FBI to investigate what he described as “threats.”
“Thus far, there is no credible threat to the public,” Shapiro said.
In Arizona, officials attributed the threats to “foreign enemies.” Per a briefing from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, the threats came from a “.ru email address,” causing four polling sites to shut down.
“The motive appears to be to ensue chaos,” Fontes said.
Russia, Russia, Russia in action.
What was the chain of custody of the polling totals during evacuations? Who stayed behind to protect the data cards? Where did the data cards go? Did anyone stay behind?
We have a good Governor. Shapiro will do his best to find out.
Given the closeness of the polls all they had to do was close the polls long enough and scarily enough that we lost the votes of people in line who could not stay and couldn’t come back later and the votes of anybody too scared to come to the polls later anywhere.
“If they can get us to fight amongst ourselves, they can count that as a victory. So that tells you a little about the Russians. They’re not our friends.”
Tell that to our President-elect!!!